Eric Saade’s "Popular" for Sweden

Melodifestivalen (a.k.a. the Mother of All Preselections) just wrapped up from the Globen Arena in Stockholm, after four Semifinals, a Second Chance round, and a Grand Final. Tonight, we saw classic schlager (in both English and Swedish!), rockabilly, and even a song that may have, in fact, been a lost track from the Magical Mystery Tour. But after votes were tabulated from eleven international juries and the Swedish public, the winner was 20-year-old Eric Saade with “Popular”:

Eric, despite his age, is already a pretty well-established performer. He actually placed third in last year’s Melodifestivalen with “Manboy“, which then proceeded to reach #1 on the Swedish Singles chart. Fredrik Kempe, the songwriter behind “Popular”, has contributed two songs to Eurovision in the past: 2008’s “Hero” and 2009’s “La Voix“. However, Sweden has seemingly underperformed over the past few years. They haven’t made the Top Ten since 2006, and failed to reach the Final last year for the first time in their history of Eurovision participation. Eric is undoubtedly adorable, and might take away a small handful of the “screaming pre-teen fangirl” vote from Blue, but I wouldn’t personally count this as a major player in this year’s event. At the very least, though, it’s an entertaining three minutes, and knowing Sweden’s recent penchant for barely changing the Melodifestvalen staging for Eurovision, I’m looking forward to seeing if the Swedes are able to bring their show to Germany, shattered windows and all. (I’d hate to be the singer that goes after “Popular”…or the cleanup crew, for that matter!)

I disagree about the Blue comment. Blue's kind of outdated by now, there might be older girls into Blue, but the teenage crowd is too young to even remember Blue… They stopped performing in 2005, long enough for the younger crowd not to really know them. I think Eric is in a better position, when it comes to the groupies-type.The big question here is, I think, how relevant is the groupie-vote in the end… Can they swing the vote? Don't think so…

You make a good point, Slavi…maybe the Eric vs. Blue duel would be more in the Cougar department? But I agree with you that even if a few votes swing one way or another, that would be such a small percentage of votes cast (plus the jury vote!) that it likely wouldn't make a massive difference in the scoreboard.But it was like I was saying yesterday to you, I'd love to see a break-down of the votes in each country…who's voting by age, gender, etc. Would be really interesting to see how things lined up!